Key Points:

• Arizona state attorneys have asked a federal judge to dismiss a Trump administration lawsuit targeting in-state tuition for undocumented students

• Assistant Attorney General Hayleigh Crawford argues the federal government lacks standing to sue

• Arizona voters approved a 2022 measure that allows students who graduated from a state high school and meet other conditions to pay in-state tuition rates, regardless of immigration status.

PHOENIX — State attorneys are urging a federal judge to dismiss a Trump administration lawsuit targeting reduced tuition for undocumented students at Arizona’s public universities, arguing the federal government lacks legal standing to challenge state education policies.

Assistant Attorney General Hayleigh Crawford noted that Arizonans voted in 2022 to change the law and allow lower tuition for those who meet certain requirements, “regardless of residence and lawful immigration status.” The Trump administration sued earlier this year to block the policy, claiming it violates federal law and a Trump executive order.

But Crawford told U.S. District Court Judge Murray Snow that the only people who can sue in federal court to overturn Arizona’s law are those who can show an injury that is “concrete and particularized, and actual or imminent.” And the government can’t, she argued.

“The government lacks standing,” she wrote. “Instead, the government points to alleged economic harm suffered by Arizona universities.” The Department of Justice put the alleged damages at $10.5 million for the last school year.

Aside from the fact that Crawford told Snow the reduced tuition amount is wrong — she doesn’t say what it actually is — she said it’s irrelevant.

“Any alleged economic harm from reduced tuition payments to state universities accrues to Arizona and its institutions, not the United States,” Crawford said.

The tuition issue for noncitizens traces back to the Obama administration, which created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program in 2012. It allows people who arrived in this country illegally as children before 2007 — colloquially called “Dreamers” — to remain and even to work if they meet certain conditions.

As a result, the Maricopa Community College system and, later, the Arizona Board of Regents agreed to let DACA recipients pay in-state tuition. But the Arizona Supreme Court ruled in 2018 that Proposition 300, a 2006 ballot measure that denies various public benefits to those not legally in the country, including any form of subsidized tuition, precluded that.

Proposition 308, approved in 2022 by a 51.2% to 48.8% margin, was crafted to say that no longer applies to tuition and scholarships.

A 1998 federal law says someone who is not lawfully present in the United States can’t get any postsecondary benefits based on state residency unless the same benefits are available to citizens of any other state.

President Trump issued an executive order last year directing the Department of Justice to take action against any state whose practices give benefits to aliens that all American citizens don’t receive. The order says that includes “state laws that provide in-state higher education tuition to aliens but not to out-of-state American citizens.”

The financial difference is significant. At the University of Arizona, for example, in-state undergraduate tuition is $13,906 a year. The annual out-of-state cost is $43,068.

Prop. 308, the 2022 ballot measure, allows certain individuals who graduated from an Arizona high school and meet other conditions to pay the same tuition as state residents, regardless of immigration status. At the same time, U.S. citizens from another state can be required to pay the higher non-resident tuition.

The state law says in-state tuition requires students to meet two conditions. They must have attended a public or private school (or have been homeschooled) “while physically present in this state for at least two years. They must also have graduated while physically present in Arizona.

For example, Crawford said, a student who crossed into Arizona daily from another state would be a resident of that state but could qualify for in-state tuition by attending and graduating from an Arizona high school.

She also said someone from elsewhere who graduated from an Arizona boarding school could qualify for the lower in-state rate even though, strictly speaking, that person is a resident of the state where her parents lived.

Anyone who met the conditions but later moved to another state could also qualify, even after being gone for years.

Conversely, Crawford said someone whose family moves to Arizona in a final year of high school does not qualify. Ditto an Arizonan who attends and graduates from an out-of-state boarding or private school.

She said rulings in favor of the Trump administration in Illinois, Texas and Nebraska are irrelevant because the wording of the laws in those states are different.

Snow has not said when he will consider the arguments.